In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, I, the inventor, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. I also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of interspecific tree which has been denominated varietally as ‘Plumred VIII’.
During a typical blooming season I isolate as seed parents both individual and groups of different plum trees by covering them with screen houses. A hive of bees is placed inside each such house, and bouquets to provide pollen from different plum, apricot, and interspecific hybrid trees are placed in buckets near the trees approximately every two days for the duration of the bloom. During 2001 one such house containing an unpatented red plum, code named ‘19P442’, was crossed by me in this manner. To pollinate this red plum, I selected bouquets from several sources of apricot and interspecific hybrid trees without keeping specific written details. Upon reaching maturity the fruit from this red plum tree was harvested and the seeds were removed, cracked, stratified and germinated as a group with the label “H8A”. They were grown as seedlings on their own root in my greenhouse and upon reaching dormancy transplanted to a cultivated area of my experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the summer of 2005 the claimed variety was selected by me as a single plant from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of interspecific tree, I asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is similar to its seed parent, ‘19P442’ (unpatented) plum, by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is full red in flesh color, globose in shape, and dark red to purple in skin color, but is distinguished therefrom by producing fruit that is much larger in size and that matures about fifty days later.
The present variety is most similar to its sister, ‘Blackred VIII’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 20,863) interspecific, by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is similar in size, clingstone in type, and firm in texture, but is distinguished therefrom by being pollen deficient and producing fruit that is darker red in flesh color, that is deep red instead of black in skin color, that is globose instead of oblate in shape, and that matures about eight days earlier.